I still have my good ol' trusty Imac G4, and still love it and use it every day (you know I can't afford a new one). I had the need to install a few apps that are not available for Mac OS X, so I reinstalled VirtualPC 7 (VPC7) and shook the dust off my old Windows 98 disk.

However, I found out that although I could install VPC7 under Leopard, I couldn't use CDs, DVDs, or even disk images to install Windows98. So then I tried Q-[kju:], but it was impossible to use -- it kept crashing, there was no network, no file sharing, and it was impossibly slow.

There was no apparent way to fix the installing issues with Windows98, so then I thought to copy the contents of the Windows98 CD into a VirtualPC image. However, I then couldn't find a way to mount the .vhdp image. After struggling for two days, I was about to quit until I found out that .vhdp images are basically a bundle with an alias and a standard .vhd image inside. With that in mind, it was finally possible to install Windows98:

First create an empty fixed-size virtual hard drive with the VirtualPC assistant. In my case, it was a 1GB drive.

In Finder, Control-click on the newly-created hard drive and select Show Package Contents from the pop-up menu. You will see two files: one alias named MainPackageFile, and a vhd file named BaseDrive.

Move BaseDrive to the Desktop (or just leave it where it is), then mount it by dragging BaseDrive onto the left side of the Disk Utility window (where the disks and drives are listed). Finally, click on the Mount button in the tool bar.

Copy the contents of the Windows98 CD onto the mounted drive. When the copy finishes, unmount the drive.

If you moved the drive to the Desktop, as I did, just move it back into the bundle. Otherwise, continue on.

Create a new PC in VPC7, and assign the virtual hard drive to the second bay of the PC.

Boot from the floppy disk, and install from the hard drive. Remember it must be from a different drive than the target disk (C:).

I've been thinking for quite a while since initially reading this, as to why you would want an 11 year old version on Win-doze? If someone has a good reason, I'd be very interesting in knowing. I binned my Win98 disks many years ago, after buying a PC with WinME (yes, what a mistake that was!).

Well, I think I can do one better -- I have a Windows 95 VM running under Fusion on my MBP. The reason? I have a particular Windows app that is critical for my work and have a VM created specifically to 'host' this one program.

Anyway, the real question was: why use such an old version of Windows? Because Win95 is the earliest version that will run standard win32 apps. Why is that important? Two reasons: With such a minimal OS, the VM boots in seconds and is extremely responsive. (i.e. I imagine the original poster may be using Win98 for performance reasons w/VPC) Also, like most OSes, each version of Windows has gotten larger and larger in terms of the HD footprint. By trimming away unused files, I was able to reduce the overall size of my Win95 VM to a little over 100Mb and still have it functional enough to run the app I need. (Even using utilities such as nlite, there's no way get a Win2k/XP VM anywhere near that small)

On a final note (this casual reply has gotten far too long), I suppose Win98 may be a good choice for simple VMs as I think it was the first version of Windows that had solid USB and scrollwheel support.

Rob, I have the exact same configuration you do. I have followed your instructions, but haven't been able to install Windows 98. I think I have done everything OK up to the part: "Boot from the floppy disk, and install from the hard drive. Remember it must be from a different drive than the target disk (C:)." I don't know what I am doing wrong, I keep getting same message "OS not found Install an OS on this hard drive". Any ideas what might be wrong?